Gentle Reader -- You are welcome to peruse my web-based journal. I assure you that my contributions to this medium will be both infrequent and inconsequential. Read on!

NOTES

Yesterday, I overheard a partner at my law firm refer to a client's account with us (we manage money like a bank) as being "ridiculously small." It turns out that the client had $500,000 with us.

Last weekend, I was the first car in line at a very busy intersection in Allston (Harvard and Brighton Ave, for you locals). I was waiting for a red light to change, when an older woman (sixty-ish) crossed the street in front of me with bags of groceries. Directly in front of my car, she dropped a large handful of change. She put her groceries down on the median, and got down on her hands and knees in the intersection, picking up coins. The light changed to green, and she went on, picking up coins. I tooted my horn at her, and finally she got up and let me go by.

I have the new Loretta Lynn album, the one produced by Jack White. I gave it a spin and it sounds pretty good. I can tell that this one may take a while to decide whether I love it or not, however. I love Loretta Lynn, however. She is my girlfriend.

Molly and I watched Season 2 of The Office this week -- it's only six episodes, of a half-hour each. The ending was unsatisfying in many ways, but I can't decde if that is appropriate or not for a show that is about grinding out your life at a dead-end job. Part of me thinks that it is thematically appropriate, and part of me is just unsatisfied. This show, as little of it as there may be, is the most brilliant thing I've seen on TV in forever.

The blog needs a makeover. I need new links, new captions, etc. I especially need to get rid of that "Buzzy the Fly" shtick, which refers to a private joke that Molly and I were making about a year ago. posted by Carlton at 11:13 PM

SAHARA

While sitting up late the other night, I caught my new favorite WWII movie on AMC -- "Sahara." I had never heard of this movie before, and frankly, I am shocked at that. Humphrey Bogart is in it, my new favorite star, as is Lloyd Bridges. Americans and Brits lost in the desert in a tank, trying to find water and avod marauding Germans, who are also looking for water. No movie has ever made me thirstier.

I was surprised at one scene, in which a German prisoner escapes our heroes, and runs off to alert his comrades. One of our heroes, a Sudanese soldier, runs after him and kills him with his bare hands. It was pretty jarring to see a very black man kill a very white man in a 1943 American movie.

Oh well. posted by Carlton at 11:36 AM

IN THE LINE OF DUTY

Everyone has probably seen this story already:

Former Football Star Killed in Afghanistan
By Donna Miles
American Forces Press Service

WASHINGTON, April 24, 2004 – He was so moved by the events of Sept. 11, 2001, that he turned down a $3.6 million professional football contract to become an Army Ranger.

Spc. Pat Tillman, 27, who was deployed with the 75th Ranger Regiment from Fort Benning, Ga., was killed April 22 during a firefight in southeastern Afghanistan. The Defense Department confirmed the soldier's identity late April 23.

To be honest, I don't think that the power of the story lies in the soldier's death -- which is, of course, a tragedy. Rather, I am inspired -- yes, actually inspired -- by his leaving what may be the most envied job in the entire world to fight for a cause he believed in. I wish that he had only been asked to sacrifice money and time, and not his life.
posted by Carlton at 11:27 AM

TABULA RASA

Something about this story makes me sick to my stomach:

Lamb, who teaches a creative writing workshop at the York Correctional Facility in East Lyme, said Wednesday that 15 women inmates lost up to five years of work when officials at the prison's school ordered all hard drives used for the class erased and its computer disks turned over.

I recall hearing a special on NPR about this program, and the amazing effects it was having in some of these women's lives. One of the women even won a national writing award of some sort.

My impression is that prison administrators are usually quite hostile to writing and creativity on the part of inmates. It used to be, I think, that the prison owned all intellectual property rights to any creative work produced "on the inside." Oscar Wilde, in "De Profundis," refers to the fact that he wrote the essay/letter while only having one sheet of paper at a time -- when he finished writing on one sheet, it would be taken from him and he would be given another. In other words, no ability to edit, no organization.

I can only imagine how violated I would feel if someone erased my writing. I mean, I'd feel the loss if the archives of this page were to disappear, as they do, occasionally -- and I can't say that I am particularly proud of this writing. Still, it is mine. posted by Carlton at 11:21 AM

STRANGE BEDFELLOWS?

For a long time, I have had this secret suspicion that there was something going on with Dubya and Condi Rice. Like they were together. Like together together. Or maybe that she's just in love with him, hard as that is to imagine.

Anyway, I just read this:

Political Conversation: Condi’s Slip

A pressing issue of dinner-party etiquette is vexing Washington, according to a story now making the D.C. rounds: How should you react when your guest, in this case national-security adviser Condoleezza Rice, makes a poignant faux pas? At a recent dinner party hosted by New York Times D.C. bureau chief Philip Taubman and his wife, Times reporter Felicity Barringer, and attended by Arthur Sulzberger Jr., Maureen Dowd, Steven Weisman, and Elisabeth Bumiller, Rice was reportedly overheard saying, “As I was telling my husb—” and then stopping herself abruptly, before saying, “As I was telling President Bush.” Jaws dropped, but a guest says the slip by the unmarried politician, who spends weekends with the president and his wife, seemed more psychologically telling than incriminating. Nobody thinks Bush and Rice are actually an item. A National Security Council spokesman laughed and said, “No comment.”

I mean, really. A dropped jaw is clearly warranted. And maybe a nervous titter from the crowd.

The funny thing is that it makes perfect sense (in my little mind): he's a randy-yet-repressed guy married to a robot, and she's an unattached woman with a thing for authority figures (I infer). And they are both unnattractive that same self-satisfied way -- why, they are perfect for each other.

I'm not suggesting that Rice is physically unattractive. She's not my type, but I can see how someone, (like, say the leader of Israel) could go for her.

Whatever you say about Israel’s Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, it is rare that he makes a faux pas in front of the media. However, there was one memorable, or even infamous, exception. Just ahead of her appointment as National Security Adviser, Condoleezza Rice paid a visit to Israel. After meeting her, Sharon was asked by the hacks what he thought of his guest. “She has nice legs,” came the reported reply.

Ever since Rice has been barraged by Israeli VIPs requesting audiences.

Good for her. Bad for the world, but good for her. posted by Carlton at 6:16 PM

NATIONAL MOOD RING BLACK

Today is Patriots' Day, a holiday specific to Massachusetts (and Maine, I'm told), and I have the day off. I opened today's Globe and turned to the most important section -- the funnies. Only today, they aren't so funny. I detect a theme:

Doonesbury: Long-running character B.D., serving in Iraq, has apparently been shot.

Get Fuzzy: More of the same.

Heart of the City (which I usually don't read, but is usually about little kids who are into some kind of fantasy life . . . yeah, I dunno): I don't know what this is about, but it doesn't look good.

I mean, for this kind of thing to creep onto the comics page -- an area of the paper designed to be as bland and repetitive as possible -- we must be pretty shaken up as a country. Doonesbury has been a political strip for some time, so that's not such a surprise (although it is normally political humor, which today's strip is not), but the other two are normally very bland. With Marmaduke defining the low end of the edginess scale for comics in major daily papers and Boondocks the high, Get Fuzzy and Heart of the City fall somewhere above Frank & Ernest and somewhere below Dilbert.

We are an unhappy people, living in an unhappy time. Even our comics are unhappy.

What next? Mark Trail invades Najaf?


posted by Carlton at 2:32 PM

A BRUSH WITH GREATNESS . . . OR SOMETHING LIKE GREATNESS.

Molly and I went to a ball game at Fenway Park this evening (Sox vs. Orioles -- Pedro Martinez was pitching). It was very cold.

We had these great seats that I had aquired from some rich dude at a charity auction. They were such good seats, in fact, that we sat within rock-throwing distance of the game's celebrity attendee: Ben Affleck. We were not close enough to bask in his personal aura, of course, but we were well within the "ripple effect" of his celebrity. People around us (young women especially, for some reason) were craning their necks, dissecting his every action: "He's bending down!" "He's drinking his soda!" "He's cheering for Manny Ramirez!" Every time he stood up, a forest of women stood up to see what he was doing. When he sat down, they sat down.

Twice during the game Mr. Affleck left his seat to go under the stands, maybe to the bathroom, maybe to smoke a cigarette (his particular section had waitress service, though it wasn't a skybox). Each time he left his seat, a staff member walked in front of him to clear the way -- which was necessary because the young women charged at him headlong every time they caught sight of him. (One teenage girl changed her seat to "lie in wait" for him to return from wherever -- he spoke to her once and therafter avoided making eye contact with her even when she was in his face.) It was the same staff member each time, a woman who sat behind Mr. Affleck during the game, apparently assigned to him.

Molly and I could not help but remark to each other that, at a basic level, it must suck to be a celebrity of that type. Ben Affleck certainly has plenty of money, and can probably have a lot of things that a person might want. He could have had his pick of any of the women in our section, certainly, and I'm sure he rode home in an expensive car to an expensive home. It is clear, however, that he has no privacy at all, and the raging assholes who are Bostonians have no
problems demanding each their little piece.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not high on Ben Affleck (what was the last good movie he was in . . . ? I'm at a loss.). I just imagine that it's tough to be in his situation, izzall. posted by Carlton at 11:40 PM

PAST-POSTING

Last February, I wrote:

Paradoxically, I think that this current awful situation may ultimately be good for all the organizations that Bush et al are trying to subvert or destroy: the UN, NATO, the International Criminal Court. The reason is this: nothing whets the global appetite for international mediating and judicial bodies than international crime, or "countries behaving badly". Depending on how this turns out, Mr. Bush's ill-timed, ill-managed, ill-planned actions against Iraq may show the world (us included) that there needs to be a super-national system of enforceable laws that even the U.S. must obey.

Maybe this is happening, maybe not. It does appear that Bush's getting his way has strengthened the hand of left-leaning parties elsewhere in the world -- most recently in Spain and in South Korea. Silver linings . . . posted by Carlton at 11:23 PM

HATTIESBURG. IT'S A FINE BURG.

Happiespatch in the news:

Justice Scalia likes to be seen and heard but not recorded.

An aside -- Who knew that PCS had a high school? I'll bet it sucks ass and is expensive, but white parents would rather have their children get a crappy education than have to associate with black children. Anyone care to refute that assertion?

In brighter news: There may be something to do when I go home for Christmas.

Personally, I would think that if you were going to kill and dismember two people in Hattiesburg, you'd really want to get rid of them locally rather than trucking them all the way to Kansas. That's just my uninformed opinion, however. posted by Carlton at 5:23 PM

READY FOR MY CLOSEUP

or, Not that anyone asked me, part II:

I'm just starting to appreciate the films of William Holden. J.J. Sefton, indeed.

And there's a minor character in Sunset Boulevard and a supporting character in The Apartment (not a William Holden film) named "Mr. Sheldrake." I'v enever head of any real person with this name. I wonder if it's an inside reference? posted by Carlton at 11:22 PM

NOT THAT ANYONE ASKED ME

I really do, however, think that we ought to actually have an election this November.

Gosh, I remember when this would have been a joke. posted by Carlton at 11:07 PM

ONE QUESTION

Uppermost in my feverish mind this evening is the question: if Bush loses the coming election -- loses it legitimately, unquestionably, in a landslide -- will he turn over power willingly? Will he just walk away? Will the people who control him allow that?

In the movie "Nixon," the President turns to an aide at the last moment, when things have finally turned against him. He's asked the aide what assets he has left to call upon.

"There's always the Army," says the aide.

Nixon didn't call on the Army, obviously. George W. Bush, however, does not have the internal brakes that Nixon, even as crazy as was, must have had to accept political exile. George W. Bush, and the people around him, will stop at nothing.

Maybe there's a teaching job for me at that school in Mexico . . . posted by Carlton at 11:30 PM

PARDON ME?

This editorial writer thinks that Bush, Cheney etc. are so rabid about winning this election partly because they fear criminal prosecution at such time as they are out of power. I'm not sure how much I agree with that -- sure, they may have committed serious crimes, but would anyone have expected them to NOT be maniacal, power-hungry zealots about this campaign?

But here's an interesting idea for John Kerry, when he takes office: I think he should sit down at the desk in the Oval Office and, as his first presidential act, pardon Bush, et al. for any bad acts they may have committed in office. I think this would accomplish two things -- one, it would be the ultimate slap at the outgoing administration, and two, it would free everyone up to talk about what the hell happened in the last four years.

Bush and Cheney may be criminals under our law and international law. But isn't it more important to know the facts than to punish a handful of malfeasors? posted by Carlton at 9:39 PM

THE NEW HIPSTERS

This guy, writing about Sportscenter, (which I have never, ever watched) may be on to something larger:

Maybe it's just that Patrick and Olbermann represented an era in which hipness meant detachment, and today's with-it young anchors represent an era in which hipness means sycophancy.

If the media serve no other purpose, they define what is cool for us mortals. If the media are nothing else, these days, they are all about sucking up to authority. Is this a world -- a respectful, patriotic, deferential-to-our-elders kind of world -- that we want our kids to grow up in? posted by Carlton at 9:31 PM

INTELLIGENCE FAILURE, PART II

So the followup to the last post is my recent realization that I am only smart (if at all) in a certain way. Inna summed it up with one word, practical, which is probably right if you want to compress it down to a single word. I don't pay to blog by the word, however.

Seriously -- I have recently been thinking about alternate career paths for myself, and I'm coming to terms with the fact that there are a lot of cool things that I would like to do for which I am really not very well suited.

One of them is to be a professor. I had long since given up on being an English professor, you understand, since my disasterous two-year marriage to graduate school in that subject. Recently, however, when I was at the old job and hating it like the devil, I went so far as to explore being a law professor. I even went so far as to cook up an idea for an article (something about transsexual marriage, which is an issue that has come up in my practice, and how the law of the 50 states is absolutely a chaotic mess on the subject, and how the proposed -- now dead -- Federal Marriage Amendment would not solve but would rather codify that particular problem) but my heart really wasn't in it.

I think I could be a decent teacher, as far as standing in front of a classroom and explaining complex material goes. I've done a bit of that, and I enjoy dealing with students. But scholarship? I don't think I'm disciplined enough, mentally.

I wanted to be a cartoonist, when I was younger. The fact that I can't draw is something of a hindrance -- and the fact that Molly is a more talented artist with her eyes closed and drunk (seriously) than I am with all of my faculties is also a serious blow to my ego.

I wanted to be a writer when I was younger, of course, as did so many. That was so long ago that I can't even remember what I thought was cool about it. Something, for sure. What happens to a dream that is forgotten?

So, I'm left with practical. I have a knack for certain things -- saving money, finding jobs when I need them, learning enough of a language to get by. I can remember jokes and various kinds of trivia. Now, I can do your estate planning.

But what to do . . . posted by Carlton at 9:22 PM